Tag: ricky

How popular is the baby name Ricky in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, see baby names similar to Ricky and check out all the blog posts that mention the name Ricky.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Ricky

Number of Babies Named Ricky

Posts that Mention the Name Ricky

The U.S. Navy annexed about two-thirds of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in the 1940s and kept control of that land for decades, using it for military training.

The accidental death of a Viequense civilian on the naval base in 1999 kicked off a series of protests against the U.S. military presence on the island. The protests received international attention, and many prominent people (incuding Ricky Martin, Rosie Perez, Jesse Jackson, and Rigoberta Menchu) visited the island to show their support.

One of the visitors was attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of John F. Kennedy. Robert ended up serving 30 days in prison in mid-2001 for his involvement in the protests.

On July 13, while Kennedy was incarcerated, his wife Mary gave birth to a baby boy named Aidan Caomhan Vieques Kennedy. Mary said, “I think that when he is older, the child will understand why he has the name of Vieques and how important it is and he’ll be proud to be a part of that history.”

The place name Vieques is based on the Taíno name for the island: Bieke, meaning “small land.”

The protests eventually convinced the U.S. Navy to leave Vieques in the early 2000s. Much of the former Navy-controlled land is now a national wildlife refuge.

Faith Popcorn: The story of my name is… I used to work in an advertising agency, and my boss, Gino Garlanda, could never pronounce my real name, which was Plotkin, and he would always introduce me to clients as Faith Popcorn. So, I changed it! It’s on page 100 of The Popcorn Report.

One possible case of a word changing form to have a phonestheme is the oldest of the “mor” names above, Mordred, the betrayer of King Arthur. His name actually was originally Medraut or Modred, Celtic versions of the Latin Moderatus. How did it get the “mor”? Possibly with some influence of his mother, Morgause, or of Morgan le Fay. But possibly also through some sound associations, with murder (earlier murther) and with the French morte. After all, the best-known account of the Arthurian legend is Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

I was struck by this, since Murphy and others had first described Athena’s personality to me as “feisty.” “They earn their names,” Murphy had told me. Athena is named for the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and strategy. She is not usually a laid-back octopus, like George had been. “Athena could pull you into the tank,” Murphy had warned. “She’s curious about what you are.”

“Those of us who have lived all our lives in Castrillo Matajudios don’t give it a second thought. But the moment you go elsewhere it sounds bad,” the mayor told AFP in an interview.

“Nowadays when people hear Castrillo Matajudios they go, ‘What a village. They kill Jews there. You have killed Jews’,” he said.

“There are some villagers, business people who travel to Israel, and they try not to show their identity card. It is a name that we know today is not very correct,” the mayor explained.

From a 2005 interview with comedian Ricky Gervais on The Daily Show:

Ricky: My highlight [of the Emmys] was a guy who won who had the best name in the world. I think he’s a director or producer or something, and his name was Bucky Gunts.

Jon: Bucky Gunts.

Ricky: And, I mean, you know — I’m sorry, this is a very intelligent, erudite show, but — I giggled for about an hour. I, honestly, I couldn’t believe my luck. Every time I thought of it, I giggled again.

(Ricky himself presented Gunts with an Emmy in 2010, and his enthusiasm over the name made “Bucky Gunts” a trending topic on Twitter.)

In a comment on last week’s twin name post, Erin said she’d “love to see some kind of analysis on what percentage of twins are given names that are/aren’t matchy-matchy.”

I do know of one analysis like this. It’s 50 years old, so it’s not exactly up-to-date, but these were the findings:

79% of twins overall had similar names

90% of identical twins had similar names

75% of fraternal twins had similar names

Name researcher Robert Plank published “Names of Twins” in the journal Names way back in 1964. This study was mentioned by H. Edward Deluzain in the essay “Names and Personal Identity” in 1996:

Robert Plank, who studied names of twins, discovered that the names fit into three patterns and that the names in two of the patterns show unmistakable similarity. The most common pattern, which occurred in 62% of the cases Plank studied, was the use of names that begin with the same letter. This included such names as Richard and Robert (Ricky and Robby), Joseph and Judith (Joey and Judy), Louise and Louisa, as well as such names as Paul and Paula and Patrick and Patricia. The second pattern involved names that had different first letters but where similar in sound, rhythm, or rhyme. Such sets of names as Tracy and Stacy, Billy Joe and Penny Sue accounted for 17% of the sets of names. Finally, Plank found that only 21% of the sets of names were different enough from one another to be considered dissimilar. Identical twins, who are always of the same sex and who look so much alike people have trouble telling them apart, fare worse than fraternal twins in the similarity of their names. For, as Plank found, almost 90% of the identical twins had similar names compared to roughly only 75% of the fraternals.

Have any of you seen more recent research on similar/dissimilar names for twins?

A friend of mine almost changed the name of her second daughter. While she didn’t end up making the change, it’s not unheard of for parents to legally change the names of their children–even years after the fact.

That’s what Johnny Carson did. According to all the biographies, Johnny’s three sons are named Christopher (b. 1950), Richard (b. 1952) and Cory (b. 1953). But Richard and Cory weren’t born Richard and Cory. They were born Kim and Barry.

In 1957, Johnny and his wife changed the names of their two youngest sons. Kim Arthur, who was five at the time, became Richard (nickname Ricky). Barry William, who was three, became Cory. Kim had been having “a little trouble over his name being mistaken for a girl’s” (actress Kim Novak was hitting it big in the late 1950s) and Barry simply preferred the name Cory to his own.